Gone are the days of children sneaking comics past diligent parents and teachers watching out for sub-par literature. The comics of today not only have plenty to offer, they are gaining well-deserved recognition and awards. Take advantage of the natural affinity children have for comics and use them as a powerful teaching tool in your classroom. The following tips, tools, and resources will get you started.

many fundamental concepts and techniques that will surely help you think differently about the power of visual communication and the art of combining words and images. This book is not just for fans of comics — not by a long shot.

Rather than drawing a comic from scratch, Comicbrush lets you mix stock artwork from our fun collection of comic backgrounds, characters and props with photos of your friends, neighborhood or college.You can add speech balloons, text, your own artwork and more, before publishing your comic to the Web, social networking sites like Flickr, Facebook and MySpace, or a friend's iPhone/Touch.

However, today we turn to Chris Wilson, author and editor of the site "The Graphic Classroom" and teacher who is currently attending graduate school full time. Mr. Wilson sees the concept in a far more in depth manner. He feels that comics do a great deal more than help keep students invested in learning. In fact, Wilson's number one goal is to develop of a love for reading in all his students - for him, the comic genre is one method to develop that love.

The Graphic Classroom is a resource for teachers and librarians to help them stock high quality, educational-worthy, graphic novels and comics in their classroom or school library. I read and review every graphic novel or comic on this blog and give it a rating as to appropriateness for the classroom.